Poverty measurement

Current government policy will result in a rise in poverty in the UK, according to forecasts by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in Child and Working-Age Poverty from 2010 to 2020. The report, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, predicts that between 2009 and 2015 the number of children in relative poverty will rise by 300,000, taking the proportion to 22.2 per cent; the number of adults of working age in relative poverty is predicted to rise by 700,000 in the same period. The levels of poverty are also expected to continue to rise between 2015 and 2020.

The report also predicts that, because real incomes are set to continue to fall among low income families, ‘absolute child and working-age adult poverty are forecast to rise continuously and by more than relative poverty’ between 2009 and 2013.

Tackling child poverty by boosting family income through benefits is a narrow approach that ‘looks set to have failed’ said Ian Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, in a major speech. The speech followed the government’s Autumn Statement, which included welfare measures that on the government’s own projections would lead to an increase in child poverty – another signal of the government’s intentions to develop a new approach to poverty less dependent on benefits.

Duncan Smith claimed there are problems with officially classifying child poverty as a family on 60 per cent or less than the median income, as this had pushed governments into introducing policies with ‘perverse incentives’. He argued that this target created a ‘poverty plus a pound’ approach – where authorities did only enough to keep some families just above the 60 per cent mark without really changing lives, while those at the very bottom could be left behind.

This website is part of the Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The research, in the field in 2012/13, is the largest ever undertaken into poverty and social exclusion in the UK and was a collaboration between the University of Bristol (lead), Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York.

Warning of six more years of austerity, the Chancellor’s package of measures included a number of provisions that, on the Treasury’s predictions, are likely to increase the numbers of children in poverty.

While Northern Ireland had long been recognised as one of the most deprived parts of the United Kingdom, comparisons with other regions and countries was difficult as little specific data on poverty had been collected. Northern Ireland was not included in the earlier PSE and Breadline Britain surveys and had no tradition of publishing household income data. The PSE Northern Ireland survey set out to redress this. The core aims of the research were:

The PSE 1999 survey was an update of the two Breadline Britain surveys in 1983 and 1990. It was undertaken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on behalf of a consortium of experts in this field from the Universities of Bristol, Heriot Watt, Loughborough and York (led by Jonathan Bradshaw). It was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the UK’s largest independent social research and development charity.

The survey made a number of methodological improvements to the Breadline Britain surveys. First, it set out to measure social exclusion and introduced a wide number of measures to explore this. The survey identifies four dimensions of exclusion:

The Breadline Britain 1990 survey was a modified repeat of the pioneering Breadline Britain 1983 survey. The survey was again seeking to establish what the public thought were minimum standards to which everyone was entitled, and who fell below these standards. The survey formed the basis of the ITV series, Breadline Britain – 1990s, which was transmitted in April 1991. Domino Films, who produced the series for ITV, commissioned the survey organisation MORI to conduct the survey. A representative sample of 1,319 adults throughout Britain was asked about their views on what constituted an unacceptably low standard of living and their own standard of living.

The Breadline Britain 1983 survey pioneered the consensual approach to measuring poverty by investigating the public’s perceptions of minimum needs and then identifying those who could not afford these necessities. The survey established, for the first time ever, what the majority of people see as the necessities of life. In Britain in the early 1980s these necessities covered a wide range of goods and activities. In other words, the survey established that people judge a minimum standard of living on socially established criteria and not just on the criteria of survival or subsistence. They take a relative, not an absolute, view of poverty and endorse the view that people are entitled to a living standard that reflects the place and time in which they live.

Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom is a major research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Launched in May 2010, two major surveys into the public’s perceptions of necessities and into living standards were carried out in 2012.

The first results were published on 28 March, 2013. More results will be published shortly.

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PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.